At the Snapdragon Summit in Maui (USA), Qualcomm entered into a public debate with Intel, criticizing the competitor’s marketing statements about the new Intel Core Ultra Series 2 “Lunar Lake” processors. Qualcomm claims that its Snapdragon X Elite processors outperform Intel’s solutions, and that Intel did not fully disclose the information in its promotional materials.
Image source: Qualcomm
Qualcomm presented its own tests, in which the Snapdragon X1E-84-100 processor beat the Intel Core Ultra 7 Series 256V by 10% in Geekbench single-core tests, while consuming 38% less power.
Image source: Qualcomm
In multi-core tests, Snapdragon showed even more impressive results, outperforming Intel by 52%, while Intel processors consumed 113% more power. Qualcomm also noted that it did not use the top-end Intel Core Ultra 9 288V model in its tests, as it simply could not be found for sale in the United States.
Image source: Qualcomm
One of the key points of the dispute was Intel’s claim that Lunar Lake processors have the “fastest CPU cores.” Qualcomm director of product management Sriram Dixit said that Intel did not include the Qualcomm X1E-84-100 processor in the tests. So Qualcomm ran its own repeated tests on the chip, based on data from PCWorld’s video, noting that Intel didn’t provide multi-core test results, focusing only on single-core performance.
According to the results of repeated tests of Cinebench 2024, the single-core Snapdragon X1E-84-100, although it outperformed the Intel Core Ultra 288V by only 3 points, and the Core Ultra 256V by 7 points, Qualcomm considered this sufficient proof of the superiority of its processor. It is noted that to test the Intel Core Ultra 256V, Qualcomm used not the usual Dell XPS 13, but another laptop – the Samsung Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360, which may affect the correctness of the comparison.
Image source: Qualcomm
Qualcomm also claims that the Snapdragon processor significantly outperforms Intel in battery life.
Image source: Qualcomm
In tests, the Snapdragon X1E-80-100 on a Dell XPS 13 delivered up to 163% better Blender CPU performance than an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V when running offline. Qualcomm also noted that the on-battery performance of its chips remains nearly the same as when plugged in, unlike Intel processors that are slowed down to save power.
Image source: Qualcomm
Despite the better results, the company acknowledges that its tests can also be subjective and suggested waiting for independent comparisons. It is worth noting that Qualcomm did not address the issue of compatibility of its processors with software for the x86 architecture, which still remains a key advantage of Intel.